The Situation
BIG FULFILMENT supply workwear and handle fulfilment — an operation where orders move every day and email is the spine of the whole thing. They had been running on Google Workspace since the early days of the business.
As they grew, the fit got worse. The rest of their commercial world ran on Microsoft, staff were working across tools that did not join up, and the way the team wanted to collaborate was not the way the platform wanted them to.
Everybody involved knew what the destination was. The problem was the journey — and specifically, the widely held belief that a mail and file migration means a bad week for everyone.
What Was at Stake
Orders arrive by email. If mail stops, or an address bounces, or an attachment cannot be found, that is not an IT inconvenience — it is an order that does not ship and a customer who notices.
There was also no realistic option to defer. Staying on a platform that no longer fitted meant continuing to absorb the friction indefinitely, and the migration only gets larger the longer it waits.
And a migration that goes badly is remembered for years. It makes every subsequent change harder to propose, because everyone remembers the last one.
What We Did
The principle throughout was that nothing gets switched off to force progress. Data is copied rather than moved, the old platform stays available, and the business decides when it is satisfied.
Every mailbox, shared address, alias and distribution list found and listed — including the ones nobody thinks to mention, which are reliably the ones that matter. Then the data: how much, where it lives, who needs it.
A migration is the one moment when structure can be fixed cheaply. Rather than copy an inherited folder tree across intact, we designed how files and collaboration should work for how the team operates now.
A pilot goes before everyone else, so surprises surface on a handful of people rather than the whole business. Whatever the pilot teaches is folded into the plan before the rest of the team moves.
Data moved in stages while Google Workspace was still fully working. At no point was there a window where the business had neither platform available to it.
Cutover timed outside the working day, with domain records handled so nothing was lost in transit. What arrived was then checked against what was there beforehand, rather than assumed.
The first working day after a cutover is when the questions actually arrive. We were available for it, and the old platform stayed in place until everybody was confident.
Three weeks from start to finish, with no operational disruption. The business shipped orders throughout, and there was no day on which the team could not work.
Decisions on how files should be organised, a pilot group willing to go first, and each person signing in once on their devices. Everything else sat with us.
The Outcome
“They don't just solve today's challenge. They act as an extension of my business to help us plan for the future.”
Microsoft 365 throughout — Exchange Online for mail, SharePoint and OneDrive for files, Teams for collaboration, and Entra for identity and sign-in. Migrated from Google Workspace.
The relationship continued past the migration. The point of designing the destination properly was that the next change is planned rather than reactive — which is the difference Emma describes above.
Published with written consent from BIG FULFILMENT, covering the company name, the description of the work, the timescale quoted and the quote as it appears above.
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